3 Things Getting Lupus Taught Me: My NEW PJMedia column

When my PJMedia editor suggested that I write about having lupus, I almost said no.

I was diagnosed with SLE in 1991 and have been in remission since around 1995. My book about living with this chronic illness came out two years later. Like most writers, by the time a book comes out, I’m so sick – pun intended – of its topic that I dread having to revisit it.

Having been in remission for almost 20 years, I can honestly make the rather unusual claim that not even the perspective of hindsight has changed my ideas or feelings about what being a pain-wracked invalid was like. Not even a little bit.

I feel like I’m supposed to say the opposite: that looking back, I could have “handled” my disease differently, or learned other, “better” lessons from it, and so forth.

But then, from the very beginning, I didn’t fit the mold of the “disease of the week” TV movie heroine, or some “poster child” for lupus.